Formation
Granite forms plutons of igneous rock several kilometers below the surface as magma slowly cools and crystallizes. The granite is under great overhead pressure.
Then, granite is uplifted to the surface during a mountain-building event. During the mountain building process, the overlying rock is eroded as the granite is uplifted, and the pressure on the granite reduced. The granite expands and forms fractures or sheet joints parallel to the surface. The granite then erodes in concentric layers (similar to how an onion peels) forming rounded masses called exfoliation domes.
While found worldwide, many such domes are found in the Sierra Nevada range in California, which includes the most famous exfoliation dome in the United States, Half Dome. Granitic surfaces in this region that have been exfoliated are identified by their lack of glacial polish.
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Stone Mountain, in the American state of Georgia.
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Granite domes in Rio de Janeiro
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Liberty Cap Yosemite, by Nevada Fall.
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A number of the domes are clustered at the upper end of Tenaya Lake, Yosemite.
Read more about this topic: Granite Dome
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“Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful—the formation of fixed habits of work.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
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“That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)